Bernie Sanders Supporters: Short on Cash, Big on Time

The Manor in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday night had the ambience of a raucous Saturday. A massive crowd, pressed against the long bar, waved dollars at the slammed bartenders; a man on the side frantically shucked 50-cent oysters. People went out of their way to reserve the tables on the balcony—the kind of tables that traditionally go to bachelorette parties.

But Tuesday was different. Tuesday was the night that Senator Bernie Sanders would, as the pundits described it, introduce himself to America at the Democratic primary debate. And nearly 250 people came out to the Dupont Circle bar to watch his turn onstage—people who’d kicked $5 and $10 occasionally to his campaign in support, but more often dedicated hours of their lives to his campaign.

According to Matt Webster, the Sanders organizer in charge of the event, he simply created a Facebook event and people came: “You never just put something up on a site and people show up,” he said.

Some people, such as Carol and John Hazekamp, came from as far away as New Hampshire, a state constantly besieged by presidential wannabes. They were visiting their son in Arlington, but dragged him to the Sanders debate-watching party. “I realized that a lot of messages he had really resonated with me,” said Carol, who regularly follows election politics and said she was won over by his crusade against Citizens United.

The two said they’d wait on their donation until they’d seen how Sanders performed (generally, said Carol, they donate about $250 to campaigns), but already started volunteering in phone banks: “I actually called a woman who was 74 years old,” said Carol. “She goes, ‘If you asked me a couple weeks ago, I would have told you he has a snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected, but now I’m interested.’” (Carol’s daughter, she added proudly, runs “Boilers for Bernie” at Purdue University.)

The rest of the Sanders supporters interviewed donated much smaller amounts—$5 here, $10 there, or however much money it took to purchase a T-shirt “so that I could show my support for him as often as possible,” said Alex Atkins, a student at the Georgetown Law Center who started a pro-Sanders club on campus. (He wore the shirt in question—bright green with a graphic rendition of Sanders’s glasses and trademark wild hair—under his corduroy blazer.)

Several people, such as Sanders volunteer Jake Stevens, said they subscribed to an automatic donation service—in Stevens’s case, paying $5 a month to the campaign. “I’m trying to bring down that average donation number that he likes to talk about,” he joked, waiting by the stairs to hand out leaflets after the debate. “Seems like a win-win.”

This being D.C., several people in the crowd worked for government entities that prevented them from contributing to the campaign, but tried to support Sanders within the confines of their jobs. Ben, who only provided his first name, works for an intergovernmental organization and plastered a giant “Bernie Sanders 2016” sticker on his white sweater. “I gave money to all sorts of stuff around here” before he started his current job, he clarified, and would have done the same if his organization didn’t put restrictions on employees donating to campaigns.

And, like Ben, the ardent supporters more often donated time.

“We’re all in school, we’re all living off student loans to one degree or another,” Atkins said, gesturing to his friends, fellow Georgetown Law students involved with his club. “But we can devote a lot more with our time than we can monetarily”—for instance, handing out flyers for hours on end in front of the enormous entrance to the Dupont Circle Metro station and plastering the campus with Bernie media.

Webster, a freelance contractor who works with DARPA, is part of a group called “Programmers for Bernie” that’s trying to build apps and LinkedIn analyses for the campaign. “My hope is that the other Democrats are doing it, but I’m not sure,” he noted.

Stevens, a political organizer who created a Facebook group called “DC for Bernie,” grew it to 1,600 followers before even hooking up with the campaign. “From what I’ve seen, practically everybody who started up with this volunteering stuff has just gone out and started doing stuff, and then maybe later on you get some contact with the campaign, or maybe you keep doing stuff for Bernie Sanders and just trust that we’re all on the same team.”

It was really easy to find these supporters, too: “I’ve been really into politics for a long time, but what really blows me away is that so many people are like, ‘I’ve never gotten so into a presidential candidate before. I’ve never done this before,’” the 25-year-old said. “So many people are getting into this for the first time.”

But didn’t that sound like the hype surrounding the first Barack Obama campaign? Kind of, said Stevens, who worked with the Obama campaign: “A lot of people my age, some younger, some even older, are so disillusioned, even for Obama. But then they see Sanders and really get involved.”

Webster doesn’t know exactly how much the average D.C. volunteer has donated to the campaign, mostly because people tend to donate through the site, but he’s been inundated with volunteers. As the crowd thinned out at the end of the night, having cheered and booed and mocked Jim Webb for the past three hours while quaffing cheap beer, Webster tried to explain Sanders’s appeal: ”He’s like this band who’s been playing this one album for years and years and years, and the country has finally come around to say ‘OH MY GOD, that’s my favorite music!’” he gushed. “Nobody can ask him a question that he hasn’t thought about, because everything he’s talking about right now are things he’s been thinking about for the last 30 years.”